Associate Professor

Judy Lambert, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and
Instruction at the College of Education. As a former classroom teacher and technology
coordinator, she taught the NC Computer Curriculum to students and provided a variety
of professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers at the local, district,
and university levels. After receiving a B.S. in Elementary Education at Fayetteville
State University in NC, Dr. Lambert completed her graduate studies at North Carolina
State University obtaining masters and doctoral degrees in Curriculum and Instruction
with an Instructional Technology concentration. In her early research, Dr. Lambert
investigated the conceptual knowledge and practice of technology integration in expert
and novice teachers in the social studies area. This research showed significant differences
in the way novice and expert teachers mentally conceptualize what it means to integrate
technology. Expert teachers focused on global and conceptual issues related to the
applications of technology such as the challenges and new opportunities presented
by using technology in the classroom, technology as a stimulant to change in the learning
environment, and the effects of technology integration on learning and the learning
environment. Novices tended to focus only on the procedural skills required to use
the technology. Expert teachers’ first consideration was the teaching and learning
processes and then the effects that technology had on these. Novice teachers had little
to no connection between the two.

Based on findings from this early work, Dr. Lambert has concentrated her current efforts
on designing a 21st century educational technology course curriculum for teaching preservice teachers'
to use and integrate technology in their future classrooms. The goal of this research
is to transition these novice teachers into thinking more like expert technology-using
teachers. To investigate the effectiveness of this curriculum, Dr. Lambert examines
its results on preservice teachers’ attitudes, self-confidence, perceived ability
to integrate technology, and actual technology ability. To apply and extend this research
to real classrooms, she conducts technology professional development in local area
schools using her 21st century curriculum. Dr. Lambert has publications in several major Educational Technology
journals including Journal of Technologyand Teacher Education and Computers in the Schools and has presented at numerous international conferences in the field including Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) and the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (Ed-Media).